Anti-Tribes of Eastern Khest
The Anti-Tribes are described by Harrican Syldanade as a peculiar class of people native to the deltas of Eastern Khest. Their chief defining characteristic is a reluctance (bordering on the pathological) to have two or more members of a given tribe in the same place for any amount of time. Members of the Anti-Tribes are not simply antisocial or hermit-like in disposition; they are quite happy to interact with outsiders and members of other tribes. However, when encountering a member of his own tribe, an Anti-Tribal will quickly become cross, agitated, hostile, and (if unable to leave the presence of his tribal brother) psychotic. First Contact Syldanade claims to have discovered the anti-tribes in 1722 as part of a standard survey of the Eastern Khest region. His journals from the expedition (collected in the volume “Bone Weevils, Hell Toads, and Other Wonders of the Khest Delta”) describe the initial encounter with the tribes as follows: : Having established the dirigible as a total loss – and in any event unsuitable for the expedition, due to the high concentration of what I have termed “Stabbing Trees” in the wooded areas – our team assembled makeshift carts and proceeded towards the heart of the delta. : Not thirty minutes later, our somewhat smaller group paused to regroup and consider new strategies for advancement in light of our discovery of a hive of beautiful, acid-spitting butterflies directly in our planned direction of travel. During this pause, we were approached by a cheerful, docile native whose name (as best I could make out) was Wix. He cleverly pantomimed the existence of a variety of horrible deathtraps in our immediate vicinity, and offered to help guide us to safe passage through the region. We were only too happy to agree. : Over the next few hours, our group encountered several solitary members of other tribes, and Wix would always stop to chat with those figures – presumably sharing news of local import – solidifying our view of him as a friendly, gregarious fellow. So it was a great surprise when we encountered a man who bore the same tribal markings as Wix, at which point both figures degenerated into a chaotic mass of shouting, stick-throwing, and presumably vulgar gestures. : Once we had removed Wix to some distance from the site of this encounter, I tried to discuss the incident with him. He seemed reluctant to discuss it at first, but was eventually coaxed to scratch a crude picture of a man with Wix’s tribal markings in the dirt. He first embellished the picture with what seemed to be various stab wounds, then simply sat and stabbed the picture with a pointed stick for several emphatic minutes. He ultimately defiled the image in a disturbing manner that necessitated a rapid exodus from camp. Culture and Customs Once Syldanade began to develop a rudimentary facility with the language of the Khest Delta, it became somewhat easier to understand the extent to which the Anti-Tribe tendency influenced the culture of the Khest delta. Notes from his initial linguistic study indicate that the tribes used different words for “person not of my people” and “person of my people.” Notably, the latter term was later discovered to be the same word used by the tribals to mean “explosive diarrhea.” Despite the presence of this universally deep-seated inner-tribe enmity, Syldanade notes that a member of a given tribe will always mate with a member of his own tribe. Slydanade was not privy to the details of the mating rituals, but he noted that the tribes’ ability to sustain their population through breeding in an atmosphere of open hostility “gives us a rare window into the psyche of these proud, strange people and is deserving of future study.” His long-time partner, Martha Horngell, offered a less charitable assessment after discussing the expedition with Syldanade: “think about the most dysfunctional relationship you have ever heard of. Now imagine arming that couple with clubs, and locking them together in a pitch-black room for several hours with dozens of crazed weasels. This is what passes for romance in the Khest Delta. Are you still wondering why I stayed home?” Children were observed to stay with their mothers in a sort of uneasy peace until the age of 5, at which point the mother would sing a poignant song of farewell to her child and send him into the jungles to fend for himself. Syldanade was able to translate an excerpt from this song: : You are still here in my home : This is confusing and disturbing to me : Do you not have places to go? : Do you not have things to do? : And yet you are still here : I go now to get a large piece of wood : And my favorite pair of Kicking Boots : I am serious, you do not want me to come over there Syldanade found this song unbearably sad, but noted that the child always seemed to be utterly relieved to be going, and in fact would skip and sing as he headed into the underbrush. Reactions and Controversy Syldanade’s account to the Farthingside Brotherhood of the Khest delta expedition was met with incredulity, skepticism, and in some cases ridicule. His description of the Anti-Tribes, in particular, was famously described by his rivals as “evidence that Syldanade’s physician may have finally discovered the exact dosage that marks the line between addled exaggeration and outright hallucination in our poor, demented colleague.” Syldanade’s presentation to the Brotherhood had to be suspended for several minutes when he described how he was able to persuade three members of Wix’s tribe to work together, in spite of their deep-seated hatred for one another, to help secure the release of his airship from the Thorn Queen. As he described his plan to have the tribals sit on each others’ shoulders, and don a costume meant to approximate the appearance of the Centipede God, the room dissolved into hysterical laughter. Attempts to gavel the meeting back to order were unsuccessful. As usual, the fact that Syldanade was the sole survivor of the expedition did little to lend credence to his passionate narrative. An angry Syldanade vowed to return to the society with evidence to support his account. The resulting expedition – fortuitously blown off course en route, causing the team to make an emergency landing at Mt. Incredulous – would eventually prove to be one of Syldanade’s greatest triumphs as an explorer. Citations * Horngell, Martha * The Exploding Folk of Mt. Incredulous